Colorado State women’s soccer coach Bill Hempen is set to begin his second season with the Rams. (Photo courtesy of Dan Byers)

Bill Hempen laughed as he recalled a memory of his first season as the head coach of Colorado State’s brand new women’s soccer program.

“We were handing out name tags at the first practice,” Hempen said. “We didn’t know anybody.”

When Hempen was hired by CSU in February 2013, he was racing the clock. He was given five months to build the program from scratch and have it ready to play that fall, a giant undertaking that included warp-speed recruiting, scheduling and promoting.

“I said, ‘If you agree to do that, you are more crazy than I thought,'” said Jeff Hooker, the University of Denver coach and a close friend of Hempen. “I told him to be prepared to be as frustrated as you’ve ever been in your years of coaching.”

Hempen, who coached the University of Colorado for 11 seasons before stepping down in 2011, was up for the challenge. He had built the Duke women’s soccer program from scratch in 1988 and led it to an appearance in the national championship game five years later.

Still, building a new culture of soccer in Fort Collins was a difficult task. Duke already had a men’s team when Hempen arrived, so there was an infrastructure in place. Everything at CSU was new, and the Rams spent their first season playing home games on a rented field in the shadow of Interstate 25 outside of Fort Collins.

This season, the Rams will play their games on a student recreation field in the middle of the campus.

“It will be nice to have to actually have students at our games this year,” said Catherine Ruder, a graduate of Coronado High School in Colorado Springs who left San Jose State after one season to join Hempen’s program. “I think we are going to improve a lot.”

CSU finished 2-13-3 in a predictably tough first season. This season, they are picked to finish in a tie for 10th in the 12-team Mountain West. (Colorado College is picked second behind San Diego State.)

But the Rams, who host an exhibition game against Colorado Mesa at 1 p.m. Saturday, have reasons to be optimistic. For starters, players are much more familiar with their teammates. Name tags haven’t been necessary.

“We understand we are underdogs and we have a lot of work to do,” Ruder said. “Each day we are trying to get better and take one step forward.”

Terry Frei graduated from Wheat Ridge High School in the Denver area and has degrees in history and journalism from the University of Colorado-Boulder. He worked for the Rocky Mountain News while attending CU and joined the Post staff after graduation. He has also worked at the Oregonian in Portland, Ore., and The Sporting News. His seventh book, March 1939: Before the Madness, was issued in February 2014.